Bitcoin study reveals how early adopters influence our decisions

said braka 4:20 AM
Do early adopters matter? The people who chomp at

the bit to get their hands on new technologies are often credited with ensuring their spread to the rest of the masses. Gmail, Google Glass and bitcoin were all pioneered by this bunch.
But did their initial interest – or brutal lack of it – have any hand in the eventual fate of these products?
One of the first studies to look at the question, published last week by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, seems to find answers. Make early adopters feel special, and their resulting enthusiasm seems to help technology go viral. Fail to do so, though, and not only do they abandon the technology, but they may have the power to convince the rest of us to do the same.
The study took advantage of a unique opportunity at MIT. In 2014, two undergraduates raised $500,000 so they could offer all incoming freshmen access to $100-worth of bitcoins.
Seeing a chance to piggyback on MIT’s Bitcoin Project, two researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management set up an experiment to study early-adoption behaviours. Some 3108 MIT freshmen signed up to the experiment’s waiting list.
Catherine Tucker and Christian Catalini identified early adopters as the first 25 per cent of students to sign up on the waiting list in the first 24 hours. They classified the rest as late adopters.
But instead of dishing out the goods in the order that people had signed up, they randomly delayed giving half the participants their bitcoins by two weeks. “Some natural early adopters got their bitcoin right away, and other early adopters had to wait,” says Catalini, with the latter forced into the role of late adopters.
Natural late adopters were indifferent to the delay, being no more likely to hang on to the currency than they were to abandon it by cashing out.